Jackson named interim vice president for external relations

Pam Jackson has been named interim vice president for external relations, succeeding Tom Milligan, who resigned from the position last month.

Pam Jackson

Jackson has served as assistant vice president and director of internal communications in the Division of External Relations. In a recent email to Cabinet announcing Jackson’s appointment, CSU President Tony Frank said he will likely allow the next president to make the permanent appointment. (Frank announced last fall that he will step down as president this summer and become full-time chancellor of the CSU system.)

“Tom left the division in great shape with a strong leadership team, and Pam is the right person to step in and guide that team until we decide how to move forward with a permanent appointment,” Frank wrote. “At this point, I’m inclined to leave that process and decision to the next president, knowing that External Relations is in Pam’s extraordinarily talented and capable hands.”

Before joining the Division of External Relations in 2015, Jackson served as director of communications for the Bohemian Foundation and Bohemian Companies and as an assistant professor in CSU’s Department of Journalism and Media Communication, where her research focused on media democracy in a market economy and electronic media regulation and policy. Before that, she worked in TV news in Denver, San Francisco, St. Louis and Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. She also worked as an assistant producer for a Chicago public television station, WTTW-TV. She holds fellowships from the Reynolds Center for Business Journalism, Indiana University Freedom Forum and Colorado Colloquium on Media Ethics and Economics. Jackson is also a first-generation alum; she earned her master’s degree in technical communication and Ph.D. in economics from CSU.

“Since joining our External Relations team, Pam has had oversight of internal communications and most recently university communications, and she has skillfully managed a number of complex communications issues for the institution in this role,” Frank said in his email. “Her leadership experience, knowledge and strong commitment to DER and its work will serve CSU well during this interim period.”

The Division of External Relations includes university news and public relations, marketing and branding, creative services, strategic communications and college initiatives, community outreach, Denver initiatives, RamTrax, social and digital media, internal communications, photography and videography, FastPrint, web communications and the University Resource Center.

“The External Relations teams are made up of a deeply dedicated and exceptionally skilled group of people,” Jackson said. “I’m proud to work alongside them in service to CSU.”